Icebreaker
by kangeiko
Summary: I'm going to be completely useless to you. // I'm sure we'll be able to lick you into shape. Rachel/Sydney femmeslash.


Title: Icebreaker  
Disclaimer: I don't own them, JJ Abrams and a whole host of other people do.

A/N: Given how depressing the vast majority of S5 is, I decided to go for a little bit of fluff. I hope that it worked... *crosses fingers*

A/N 2: The titles of the different segments may sound familiar - I suppose I should credit Ian Fleming...

* * *

(_You expect me to talk? // No, Mr Thomas. I expect you to die._)

* * *

"It's called Mission X," bioengineering specialist Derek Thomas informed the latest crop of green recruits over the welcoming drinks. 'Green' in this instance meant 'new to APO': each and every one of them had spent several years in the CIA and had distinguished themselves in their specialist research field in some way. Rachel hadn't even heard that _those_ new recruits got a welcoming party until Sydney told her over coffee one day. It was apparently aimed at lower-level research staff and, plus, they didn't tend to involve double agents and defectors in the social network overly much. Something about it keeping the mortality rate low, Dixon said. But, then, Rachel didn't actually _know_ Dixon that well, so all she had to go on was what Derek Thomas had passed on to the new tech and intel workers, overheard at a mixer she hadn't technically been invited to (but which Sydney had insisted that she attend anyway). "It'll be fun," Sydney said. "C'mon. I'll go with you?"

The party was okay, but mainly full of people that she didn't know. She stuck pretty close to Sydney for the duration, figuring that she'd have fewer chances to screw up that way (and that if it was invitation only, maybe _Sydney_ had an invite). Thomas's spiel started more or less upon their entrance, and continued for a good hour or two. It consisted mainly of: _Mission X!!!_ with a variety of exclamation points, which was apparently "the first seduction mission the new field agents are sent on. And they make _sure_ that it's a bit of a doozy." He went on at some great length, explaining the precise requirements of this mission while the new tech recruits all nodded sagely and made a mental note to avoid Derek Thomas in future. He was a genius when it came to bioengineering, it was true, but did that mean that they should have to put up with his elaborate fantasies of what field agent training involved? No, it did not.

Rachel had no such prior knowledge. She did, however, have a fairly developed bullshit detector and one other great resource.

"God, what an ass," Sydney murmured into her ear. "You'd think that he's _never_ been laid." She was wearing a simple black dress; her purse tucked under one arm.

Rachel smiled despite herself. "He had a long list of mission requirements," she murmured back. "Some of them were quite detailed."

Sydney snorted. "No doubt. I should go over there and - ah. No, wait, that's even better -"

Jack Bristow had arrived and was stood two scant feet behind the still-babbling Mr Thomas, a thunderous look on his face.

Rachel smiled and rocked back on her heels. Now _this_ was a show.

* * *

(_The name's Gibson. Rachel Gibson._)

* * *

She was on her hands and knees in the bedroom, looking for the latch that intel had assured her was somewhere on the underside of the bed, when her back-up arrived.

"Oh, my." Sydney stood in the doorway, gun in one hand, disc in the other, and jaw somewhere between her knees.

Rachel took Sydney's reaction to mean that she had not been expecting _that_ outfit. "I can't find the latch," she said, still somewhat startled to hear 'Roxanne's sultry voice coming out of her mouth. 'Roxanne' was the alias she had adopted for this mission and had a much lower-pitched voice that was a pain to maintain, but was apparently good practice (at any rate, Dixon seemed to think so). "I don't think it's here."

Without another word, Sydney tucked both her .38 and the disc into her pocket and tugged the nearest mirror off the wall. She pushed the mark - young, pretty and gaudily dressed - out of the bed and slid the mirror beneath. It took her less than 2 minutes to check all four sides of the large bed, moving in swift, efficient motions despite the encumbrance of her swollen stomach. When she sat back on the bed, she was frowning. "There's no latch."

"No," Rachel agreed, "there really isn't." No latch on the bed meant that it was somewhere else. Where could it be, though? She cast a cursory glance about the room, noting the sheer amount of _stuff_ that seemed attached to the walls, ceiling and floor. This was going to take hours - and they only had ten minutes left. Rachel sighed and turned her attention to the mark's unconscious body. How long would it take to wake him up? And did she even have anything to bring the poor guy around? No. "Damnit," she said angrily. "I've got to do the whole thing again, haven't I?"

Sydney grinned at Rachel's expression and shook her head at the observer tucked away in the corner. "Bzzz," she hummed softly. "Game over."

"Damnit," Rachel said again, watching helplessly as the mark stood and stretched. _Damnit._

Sydney tucked an arm around her bare shoulders, courteously ignoring the tassels that seemed to fly with each movement. "Hey. You wanna grab a coffee while we debrief?"

"I don't know," Rachel said morosely, "is it likely to make me feel even fractionally less stupid about this?"

* * *

(_From this angle, things are shaping up nicely._)

* * *

"I'm never going to get certified to field status above Level 2, am I?" She glared down at her coffee as if all the ills of the world could be attributed to the dark swirl of liquid. "It's going to be a field commission for a few months, then back to tech work."

Sydney poked at her Danish with increasingly disparaging movements, almost as if she was chastising it. "You're getting better," she said, which was neither here nor there, but was a nice thing to say anyhow.

Glumly, "better from 'complete novice' doesn't do us much good."

"Hey!" Sydney held up a finger. "Don't you start casting aspersions on my mentoring work. You're doing fine. Those training exercises are _designed_ to be tough." She gave up on chastising the Danish and simply tore it into shreds, popping one into her mouth. "Seriously. I'm so distended and unnatural right now that if I was lying, my nose would probably start to grow."

"I thought that pregnancy was supposed to make you feel womanly and goddess-like."

"Really?" Sydney looked down at her stomach. "Well, I suppose that I could balance a variety of mission tech on my stomach. Does that count?"

Rachel rolled her eyes. "No. Anyway, isn't 'glowing' supposed to enter into it at some point."

Sydney put down her Danish and coffee carefully, glancing furtively around the café. Not that it mattered; it wasn't actually a _café_, per se, but a blocked-off area by the APO cafeteria where agents could go and shoot caffeine into their veins by a variety of means. "If by 'glowing' you mean turning into a horny crazy person?" She whispered, "then, yeah, I'm glowing." She stared morosely down the remains of her afternoon snack. "Between that and the insane need for sugar, I haven't been able to sit still for days."

Rachel hid her smile behind her mug and patted Sydney's arm comfortingly. "Thank you," she said.

Sydney affected a puzzled air that was not the least bit convincing. "For what?"

"Oh," she waved an arm to indicate the training mission report. "You know. Helping me. Backing me up. Pretending to be lust-crazed so I feel a little less stupid about You Know What."

Sydney's smile was kind. "Well, we've all done - You Know What - at least once."

Rachel chocked on her coffee a little. "_You've slept with Julian Sark??_" She hissed, incredulous. All right, not _that_ incredulous; she saw how Sark had looked at Sydney, swollen belly and all.

"No!" That was too loud; people turned. Sydney lowered her voice. "No - just, slept with someone who turned out to be on the other side is what I meant."

"Oh." Rachel absorbed this information slowly, trying to sip from her now-empty coffee mug.

She felt inexplicably relieved.

* * *

(_Can I interest you in something? // I'm tempted to say yes immediately._)

* * *

She was mostly glad that she's not living with Sydney any more, despite her embarrassing girl-crush. No, wait - it's precisely _because_ of her embarrassing girl-crush that she is relieved to be living on her own, in her own apartment, with no pregnant horny person on the sofa eating marshmallows and reading intel with a stuffed teddy bear tucked behind her back.

"He's just the right size," she said when Rachel inquired about the odd positioning. "My back aches, and I need something to dig into it."

Rachel thought about offering her newfound friend a massage, then suddenly remembered why this would be stupid idea.

* * *

(_What sharp little eyes you've got. // Wait 'til you get to my teeth._)

* * *

"Have you seen Derek Thomas around recently?" She asked suddenly. They were locked in an APO office, poring over the latest files they had purchased from Sark. (Not that she was going to ask about _why_ they were purchasing files from Sark when, clearly, that was the way madness lay.)

Sydney looked at her oddly. "Who?"

"You know." She held her hand up off the ground at not a very great height, indicating a munchkin. "The really short bioengineer. The one who was talking about Mission X."

Sydney looked blank for another moment then suddenly laughed. "I think he got transferred. I don't think that my father appreciated his nonsense. Why?"

"No reason," Rachel said, and bent back over the blueprints.

Actually, she thought it was rather a pity. As a tech specialist, she'd had these vaguely sexy ideas about what field agents did; ideas carefully informed by perhaps one too many _Man from UNCLE_ and _James Bond_ features in her youth. Her brief stint covering for Sydney had soon persuaded her to leave the fantasy aspect of her job to one side and focus exclusively on the aspects that were likely to get her killed (and, God, she had three more chapters of her Arabic workbook to read this evening, even if she got home from work early). Still. The other techs and specialists - the ones without even a Level 1 field clearance - only had those ideas, and did it really do any harm?

"Coffee?" Sydney asked innocently. She smiled, wide and startlingly bright.

Rachel looked down to where Sydney's fingers were stroking an even stripe against her bare arm. "Sure," she said.

*

fin


End file.
